1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein pertains to a thermostat assembly and especially to one as applied to an extra capacity small steam iron with its surge boiler in the rear of the iron and a thermostat mount providing close direct connection to an adjacent contoured outside iron surface. The thermostat is constructed to reduce size and sensitivity in calibration and temperature overshoot by providing a built-in delay for substantially uniform soleplate temperature.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many irons, steam or dry, provide a mounting for a temperature controlling thermostat where the mount comprises a boss on the soleplate creating a heat sink or collecting conductor to sense temperature and a thermostat is mounted on the boss to react to temperature changes required by various manual settings. Generally, in an iron the thermostat is mounted centrally or in the forward portion of the soleplate to detect the hottest part and react accordingly.
Recent developments have produced lightweight, smaller plastic irons at a lower price while retaining many of the standard features for dry, steam, and surge operations and these smaller irons have presented problems in fitting the usual thermostats to obtain satisfactory results. A typical iron of this general type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,986,282 which iron uses a rear surge generator that required a revision in design from usual larger irons simply because there is not enough room in the small lightweight iron for all the parts to supply the various features. An improvement that provides an iron structure eliminating some linkages and using a direct thermostat coupling through the side of the iron is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,045,894 and both patents are of common assignment. The arrangement of these patents provides limited space for the thermostat mount at the soleplate creating calibrating difficulties and a compensated type thermostat must be used to minimize temperature overshoot. Available thermostats are simply not adequate in such setting to be sensitive in calibration with minimum overshoot. Thus, the main object of the invention is to provide a thermostat assembly as may be used in a small iron that reduces calibration sensitivity in a smaller envelope while reducing temperature overshoot for uniform soleplate temperature.